Requiem for Anthi: Anthi - Book Two (6 page)

Go back, to the ship
, he thought.
Two sweeps on maximum bomb spread and that will be the end of these savages
.

It would also be the end of him. The other human ships would be alerted and come after him. Then only the GSI would own this planet, his planet.

He wasn’t going to let it happen.

Ahead, the Bban’jen stood like a wall before him, their backs turned to him, swaying together as they chanted their victory to the new moons of Lli. The sentries shrilled in unison, and the chanting faltered as the horde turned slowly, a few at a time, then more, to watch him come.

They were dressed in all their finery—wide leather trousers and jerkins overlaid with lead mail so supple it shimmered silver in the torchlight. Their hideous faces were swathed in protective leadweave cloth so that only their eyes glowed at him. Most wore long, barbed swords studded with hilt jewels and jen-knives thrust through their wide belts. Some held ruby-encrusted goblets; others swayed as though they had already sampled too much of the drink being poured from swollen chaka skins.

The women were resplendent too. Beneath leadweave cloaks and embroidered gauntlets shone gowns of transparent pria cloth laced with gold and silver threads. Exotic scents crossed the air, mingling with the smokiness of burning herendi dung and huge spits of sizzling zantza haunches.

Asan was conscious of overwhelming thirst and hunger, then in anger he forced those needs back.

Undaunted by the sudden silence, he passed through their midst. Insolently they parted for him, some of them not moving from his path until they were only inches apart. Bloody jen-knives were drawn. He could hear their growling. It would take only an instant of drunken boldness for them to forget the gesture of truce he came under. Then he would be one more head upon the stakes, providing target practice for children armed with dung.

The leather mats upon the ground became handwoven carpets of scarlet and blue patterns. His boots left dust marks upon them. He came to a large circular tent in the center of the dara, one with sides of transparent leadweave.

On either side of the entrance poles, large
havsks
held fat cones of burning incense that sent green smoke into the air. Asan could see dancers in filmy garments and silver bells upon their ankles and wrists twirling inside the tent. Henan girls veiled with shining hair to their knees served platters of food. Bailanke and flute music whispered together in strange melody patterns.

As Asan stopped at the entrance and stood staring inside, however, the music and dancing stopped. For a moment the only sound was the roaring crackle of the fires and the thudding of his own heartbeat. It was stifling behind his mask. Sweat stung his eyes, and as he blinked the world seemed to shimmer blackly around him. His mind went blank as he felt the pressure of other minds against his rings. Suddenly he wanted to get out, crack orbit, and leave this radiated dustball behind. Even all the wealth in the universe wasn’t worth some things.

But the Tlar pride in his body refused to budge. He stood there motionless until one of the elders rose to his feet and came to the entrance of the tent.

Asan recognized him as Ggil, and an old pain flickered in his heart. Giaa’s father. Asan thought of silver eyes and shining hair and the warmth of her love. Then he closed the thoughts away. Giaa was dead; her own father had used her as a pawn, and Aural had killed her.

In that moment as the two men stared at each other, Asan was glad he wore a mask. Silence stretched taut between them, then Ggil clicked his jaw.

“The mighty Asan,” he said, his voice a soft rasp. “Come to surrender?”

Asan stiffened at the thinly veiled amusement. “No. I have come to bargain.”

Bban laughter barked all around him. Ggil gestured, and Asan entered the tent. Saar came in one step behind him. Bban minds pressed against Asan’s protective rings. He glared at all of them, and pressed back.

Another elder, cruelly scarred across one eye, gestured rapidly at Ggil before barking loudly and rocking himself back and forth. Asan looked at him.

“I am glad you are so amused, Uxe Ookri,” he said coldly. “Only the Bban’n are foolish enough to laugh on the eve of their own enslavement.”

That brought them all to their feet, jen-knives whipping out.

Ggil lifted his head. “Brave words, Tlar. Brave words to hide the shame of your defeat. Your men are dead, and you stand in the tent of victory. We have saved a stake, a tall bronze stake, in a place of honor for your head.”

Asan raised one brow inside his mask. So the gesture of truce was to be ignored. Tired of it anyway, for holding his knife over his heart was making his wound ache, he sighed and removed his mask. It was the gesture of surrender, but he didn’t care.

He tossed the mask onto the ground along with his cloak and gauntlets. He sheathed his jen-knife. Crossing the tent, he took a jewel-encrusted ewer from the unresisting hands of a female and poured himself a tall goblet of sour Bban ale. Gulping half of it down and gasping as it jolted the breath from his lungs and started a fire burning in his stomach, he seated himself on a chair of metal and leather and stretched out his long legs.

He faced the expressions of fury around him with a smile. “No lies,” he said. “Alien invaders have arrived. Didn’t you see their ship pass overhead this afternoon shortly before your attack? They will enslave all of you or kill you, and then you will wish to the farthest reaches of your pitiable Bban souls that you had your Tlar masters back.”

“Pan’at cha!”
snarled Ggil, and slapped the goblet from Asan’s hand.

It rolled across the carpeted ground, and the ale left a stain upon the bright patterns.

Ggil struck at him with a knife, but Asan’s rings knocked the weapon from Ggil’s hand. It clattered upon the goblet, and there was a heartbeat of silence within the tent.

Asan sat there, facing the elder, his long body tensed in the chair. His eyes burned with anger barely held in check. Then he forced his hands to uncurl from the arms of the chair.

“You seem to forget, Ggil, that I am not like the other Tlar’n. I command the same powers with or without Anthi.”

A low, resentful mutter went around the tent.

“There are no invaders,” snapped Ookri. “You lie. We would have known if any—”

“It is not a lie,” said Saar suddenly, causing them to glance at him in surprise. Pulling off his mask and tucking it nervously under his arm in jen fashion, he faced them. “Small men with striped eyes in great metal ships from the sky. I saw this thing. By the four moons of Lli, I swear it.”

“Chielt,”
Ookri snarled at him. “You come trotting into the dara at his heels like the pon dung you used to be and echo all his lies. He has twisted your mind, and you do not know it.”

Saar stiffened, his hand flying to the hilt of his knife. “I saw it! I went to the realms of the gods in it. If you doubt my words, Uxe Ookri, send warriors to the hills where a scar is burned into the sand. Have them bring back the corpses of small men with striped eyes.”

“We have seen the place. There are no bodies,” said Ggil.

Asan glanced up. It was too late to tell Saar the bodies would have been charred to ashes in the backlash of takeoff.

“I took one human as prisoner,” said Asan carefully, aware even as he spoke that the question was futile. The Bban horde kept no prisoners in battle; his would not still be alive. “Did you find him when you took the stronghold?”

“Enough of this game,” said Ookri. “Summon the warriors. They fought well today. It is their right to take his head and eat the flesh from his bones.”

“No!” said Saar. He stepped between the elders and Asan. “My life is his. He killed all my men and spared me. He has spoken only the truth to you. Together we rode the skies in the ship of the invaders. Together we shared minds to seizert back to the sands. He knows what these humans are. He knows what they can do. He understands how their machines work. And they have such machines! All kinds, to serve them. How can we, with our swords and our bombs and our chaka herds, fight machines?”

“If you had fought with your brethren today instead of cowering behind Tlar skirts,” growled Ookri, “you would know how.”

“Even the Tlar’n do not have machines such as these. The Tlar’n cannot go beyond the world and return. Even when Anthi ruled us all, they could not do so much.”

Ookri raised his hand. “You speak blasphemy—”

“I speak by custom! It is my right as a blood warrior sworn under Lli. I brought the Tlar leiil to camp under truce. You cannot take his head unless he is a prisoner, and he is not! Defy the Tlar’n, Uxe Ookri, but you cannot defy the law of the tribes!”

“See the Tlar smile?” said Ookri, releasing his musk. It smelled sour and thin, the stale musk of an old man. His one eye glared balefully. “He manipulates Saar’s mind. It is another trick.”

“The law remains the law,” said Ggil wearily. “We shall not take his head yet.”

Asan eased out the breath he’d been holding. “One small step toward becoming civilized,” he said. “Holding to law in the face of temptation.”

Then because it was a pompous thing to have said, he grimaced and shook his head.

Jen-knives whipped out.

“No tricks!” snapped Ggil suspiciously. “You will remain in the camp while we debate.”

Asan sighed. “Debate all you like. In the meantime the humans have probably made contact with Aural. Once they team up, we can forget about any chance we have. I need your help. This isn’t a matter of Tlar and Bban hostilities. We don’t want the humans here. Because there won’t be a future for any of us if they—”

“The Tlar future has already ended,” said Ggil coldly. “Take him away.”

Asan whirled, ready to snap out his rings, but the three guards who entered the tent held fire-rods aimed at him. The fight went out of him, and for a moment he knew that old, dry-mouthed fear. He’d died from a fire-rod wound once; he didn’t want to do so again.

Ookri tilted up his scarred face. “I smell Tlar fear. Ah, how sweet the scent.
Choi’heirat, eh, dar kai?
”

Asan’s fists clenched. He was through with these short-brains. As soon as GSI strafings took the edge off them and cut their numbers in half, they would come crawling back to their old Tlar masters. Meanwhile, he wasn’t going to sit cross-legged in a nomad tent and wait to be executed.

Aware that the guards would be expecting him to try something, he relaxed his muscles and bent to pick up his mask and cloak. There. He caught the imperceptible slackening in the two nearest guards. They expected nothing from him until he had his protective clothing on.

With one flip of his wrist he sent his mask spinning at the throat of a guard. His other hand flung the cloak over the head of the next. His rings snapped hard at the third. Asan gathered himself to seizert, but an immense blow to the back of his head scattered his inner control.

His head felt as though someone had turned it into a copper gong and struck it. For one instant he thought he would be sick. Then his knees buckled, and he was falling, toppling over and going down slowly as though in freefall. But the ground with its crimson and blue carpet rose to meet him. It hurt, hitting the ground.

And as though the world speeded up again around him, pain split his skull, a scarlet tide of pain that blinded him and made all the broken fragments of his rings shatter more.

The last thing he heard was the shrill barking of Ookri’s laughter.

In the Mura-an citadel northwest of Altian, Aural seated herself beside the fool’s bed of purple cushions. She stared at the toe of her embroidered slipper in an effort to keep her temper. She was not quite sure why she had bothered to come here. The fool had served her purpose in delivering a living child. There was no need now to pretend to give her consequence.

“I want to see my child,” Zaula was saying. Her voice was tired and petulant. Her face was drawn and sallow, with dark smudges beneath her eyes. “I have the right. To hold her, to nurse her, to—”

“—enfold her in your rings?” asked Aural cuttingly.

Zaula’s dark eyes widened with hurt. Her small plump hand clenched upon the rich coverlet. She swallowed several times before she spoke again:

“I must thank you, Dame Aural. Without your help the child would have died.”

“Yes, I know.”

Aural rose to her feet and crossed the narrow, plainly furnished room. Her pleated robes rustled about her legs as she moved. The smallness of the room fretted her, as did the incense burning to hide the birth smells still lingering on the air.

She should leave. There was nothing more to say to the fool.

Her eyes narrowed as she swung about to stare at Zaula’s tired face. The small, voluptuous body, once so swollen and awkward, now was shrunken beneath the coverlet. Zaula was no one, of no importance in any sense, a widow without rank and without house.

But she had born a child, and Aural could not.

I shall make Cirthe mine
, Aural thought.
You, little fool, do not even have sufficient command of your rings to communicate with her. But already I see into her mind and know her as you never shall
.

“There should be music in celebration,” said Zaula fretfully. “I should be holding her in my arms, the two of us lying in state to receive the first homage of the houses. I have heard no salutes fired, no cheering, nothing but this awful silence. The matriarch’s women have not come to me to give me their kisses or to bathe me in scented water or to present me with embroidered robes. There should be a feast given and a naming—”

“Her name is Cirthe,” snapped Aural, impatient with these unimportant matters.

Zaula gasped. “You have touched her mind? Already? Without…That was my right, Dame Aural. I am her—”

“You cannot look upon her with truth. Why should we wait for you to humiliate yourself? Cirthe has been taken from your care. Do not start more of your sniveling. You knew from the first it would be like this. As for feasting and celebrations, do not be naive. We are scratching for survival, even with the wealth of Mura-an about us. And the Tlar’jen in the Outerlands have been destroyed.”